Help students understand how authors create suspense in a story through pacing, description, and other literary techniques. This skill is important for understanding plot and developing critical thinking skills.
Creating Suspense
Suspense is an essential element in Mystery and Suspense Literature.
It is created to keep the readers hooked onto the story and to keep them on the edge of their seats.
When creating suspense, the writer intends to make the reader feel anxious, nervous, or excited.
What is the purpose of creating suspense in literature?
To keep the readers hooked, To share information, To bore the readers.
Suspense can be created in different ways including through the setting, characterization, and plot.
The setting can be made eerie or ominous, the characters can be made unpredictable, and the plot can be full of twists and turns.
How can suspense be created through characterization?
By making the characters unpredictable, By making the characters transparent, By not having any characters.
The writer can use foreshadowing, cliffhangers, and tension to keep the readers interested in the story.
Foreshadowing is hinting at something that will happen later on in the story.
A cliffhanger is a sudden ending to a chapter or section, leaving the reader in suspense until the next chapter or section.
What is foreshadowing?
Hinting at something that will happen later on, Explaining everything, Having a humorous ending.
Tension is created when the reader is presented with a problem or conflict that they want resolved.
Tension can be created through dialogue, action, and suspenseful pacing.
How is tension created in literature?
By presenting a problem or conflict to be resolved, By having no conflict at all, By having a predictable ending.